"We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."–Kurt Vonnegut

Admittedly one of the weirder miniatures now in my collection, this is a “Corpse Cart” from Games Workshop. I found the kit in a discount bin so how could I not? There were a few extra bits for alternative assemblies and customization. It’s not my neatest paint job, but I’m happy with it.

As you can see, it’s a cart pulled by a team of zombies who have apparently been nailed to, or impaled on, the yoke. The corpses in the cart don’t all look dead, and they are being munched on by a handful of giant rats (some of them are tunneling through the bodies).

The ghoulish driver might be a vampire, or some kind of necromancer. I have no idea how this thing functions in a game of Warhammer, but I imagine it either spreads terror through the opponents’ ranks, or rams into them like an Achaemenid Persian scythed chariot. Maybe your necromancers can use it to raise additional zombie forces. In that case it sort of goes with the Skeleton recruiting party.

I do like how the cart mimics a rib cage.

The blood splatter was accomplished by taking an old toothbrush, loading it with a bit of paint, and running my thumb across it so it splattered the model when I nearly finished painting it.

While I was waiting for various parts to dry, I worked on some vampires, which I’ll photograph eventually. Here’s a Grenadier “Blood giant,” which I suppose is what happens when a giant or ogre gets bitten.

I was still having fun with the gore effects. The fuzz near his feet is meant to suggest a cloud of fog or smoke. His left foor was not fully formed and there was a suggestion of liquid or gas welling up around him, so maybe he’s emerging from, or disappearing into, some fog.

Here a few other odds and ends I painted recently.

The first is one of John Dennett’s Grenadier figures from the Monster Manuscript series. Maybe inspired by the Mi-go of H.P. Lovecraft.

Next up, a Superior Models wizard. Very clearly based on the description of Gandalf from the Hobbit; his eyebrows really do come out to the brim of his hat! I like the face in the staff too.

Lastly, three serpent folk.

The oldest is a Grenadier “Wizzards & Warriors” medusa. It’s a rarity, being male. His expression makes me think of “Little” Steven van Zandt. The arms are very disproportionate. It’s obviously one of the very early monsters from that range, when Andrew Chernack was still developing his skills.

The other medusa is from German “Metal Magic” line. It’s pretty standard looking but nicely sculpted.

The last one I’m not sure about. His left arm probably had another “sword” originally, but it had been cut off when I got him. He’s holding a shield from the Zvedza “Orku” set. I got that figure in a lot with a bunch of broken or incomplete figures sold as scrap metal on ebay.

In just eighteen days we’ll be celebrating the nativity of the Krampuskind!

Left to right we see a manger animal (Reaper Miniatures), an angel (Ral Partha), Krampusjoseph (Heritage Models), the Krampuskind (Dollar Tree), Krampusmary and two magi (all Metal Magic), and a third magi (Grenadier).

A few barbarians I hadn’t posted yet. Two from Asgard (Viking Forge recasts):

This one sort of replaces a figure I lost … not really sure when. But at one point I had this and a similar unarmored and beardless dude which is no longer in production. Both originally came with a selection of weapons (hand axes, swords, shield, bow and arrows maybe?) but I got mine second hand so I’m not positive what was originally theirs. Anyway I had to give him a different sword than the rather chunky one that he came with, because his hands are tiny, almost Trump-like.

Next up is another Asgard/VF barbarian, fairly traditional.

This guy is a MageKnight figure, and honestly not the best in terms of pose, detail, and proportions. But he’ll work as Chaos Thug or something.

TSR’s Conan the king. The axe is a replacement. He’s probably the worst figure in the set — he came with a neat Thak the Ape (which probably was the main reason my brother bought the set) and a decent Thoth-Amon, as well as an excellent vampiress and a couple of serpent things.

A couple of random monsters, both Grenadier. On the left, a Vegetation Beast, from the Fragon Lords “Horrors of the Marsh” set. This was a rather odd set — it had great work by John Dennett, but for whatever reason he must have been ordered to partly replicate the original AD&D “Denizens of the Swamp”. Both sets had lizard men, a giant snake, a troll, and plant-based monster, though they diverged from there. Anyway he’s a great and unique monstrosity. The gargoyle next to him is a bit of a cheat. The wings are not original — I got the figure second-hand with no wings, but also acquired the wings separately in a trade. I think they are Reaper — I remember them making a blister of spare bird and bat wings to customize your own angels and devils or something.

FWIW here are all my fungus and plant monsters, including slimes but leaving out the treants (hah!), in their designated box.

Two more monsters — a HeroClix villian repainted as a beastman or satyr, and a hag (night hag?) from Metal Magic (a MegaMinis recast). I’m not 100% happy with the night hag. I kind of rushed the eyes and they look like bloody sockets rather than glowing red. I can’t remember anything about the superhero/villain except that he is an alien of some kind and exiled from his planet. I don’t even remember if he is a DC or Marvel character. But he makes a good beastman.

As a break from the barbarian horde, I started looking at my halflings, who have always been under-represented on my painting desk. Here are a bunch of Ral Partha halfling militia. Don’t look too close, really need to finish them up later. They unusually petite. Here’s a couple next to a Grenadier halfling. The rest of that set (barring the archer, which has been MIA for decades) will be coming soon…

Am I still painting a lot? Oh hell yeah. As usual, quantity takes primacy over quality.

First up, two nagas from the Descent board game.

They follow the old Monster Manual illustration pretty spot-on. Though I didn’t apply the mascara.

For scale, here’s a Grenadier wizard I probably didn’t post already. He should have had a skull on his staff but the one I traded for was broken. The round orb is just the end of a stickpin.

Interestingly, Way back in the early 1980s when Dimensions for Children released a series of fantasy playsets and action figures (Dragonriders of the Styx), one of their designs was based on the Monster Manual illustration too. TSR sent a cease & desist letter (I’m not clear on how a sculpture can violate a copyright on drawing; it certainly wasn’t a patented image, but then again who wants to go to court?) and soon the toy naga was appearing with the face completely removed. Original on left, later version on right!

I managed to score a later naga in a trade some time ago, and painted him (her? it?) up thus:

Anyway I also finished the last three Descent hell hounds I have:

Here they are with the same wizard and the three I painted earlier:

I was really on a roll with the plastic monsters; here are three Reaper Bones fungoids/mushroommen/myconids or whatever they’re called:

I already had a metal version of the big guy, and I’d say he’s an almost exact replica. Maybe a slight loss of detail on the staff and cap.

Finally, I painted the last of the demons from the MegaMinis monster box I bought some time back. It’s a weird insect-like thing, and while he looks ok from the side, he suffers from the same flatness of other demons originally made by Metal Magic.

They call it a demon, but I’m not really convinced. I’d call it more of an alien. Or a thing. Or a thingthing.

Like this:

Still working on Halloween-related minis, I finished two flesh golems — or rather a flesh golem and a homonculous.

The Tom Meier/Ral Partha Frankenstein is a nice sculpt although the detail on the face is kind of obscured by mold lines I couldn’t quite remove. The other guy is a MegaMinis recast of the Metal Magic original. I tried to emphasize his being stitched together by painting each contiguous part a different shade.

And here are all my flesh golems. The one on the far left I painted a really long time ago, but I was very proud of how he turned out. I can’t bring myself to strip and repaint him, but I might touch him up since the existing paint and sealer isn’t too thick. The other two I’ve posted before.

For the record, of course, Frankenstein’s monster was never explicitly described as being made from corpse parts, and my impression from the book was that he was more of a homonculous created from chemistry and magic.

Like this:

In just ten days, I believe, we’ll be celebrating the nativity of the Krampuskind. Left to right we see a manger animal (Reaper Miniatures), an angel (Ral Partha), Joseph (Heritage Models), the Krampuskind (Dollar Tree), Mary and two magi (Metal Magic), and a third magi (Grenadier).

Like this:

Over the long MLK weekend I managed to get a little painting in. I’ve been kind of torn between prioritizing adventurers and monsters. Although I have a fair number of player character types painted, we always end up using the same dozen or so for every campaign — there is a particular shortage of human rogues, rangers, druids, and bards, as well as demihumans other than dwarf fighters and elf archers. But then again we use a lot of different monsters and I get a sad sort of feeling of accomplishment when all of a given type of monster have finally been painted, sorted, and placed in a labeled box. (There might be meds that would help with that.)

Anyway for some reason I kept to a palette of mostly greens and reds for this last set.

Four adventurers: a gnome mage, a halfling fighter, a human thief, and a human bard.

The gnome is Ral Partha, the halfling Grenadier — one of my oldest minis in terms of how long I’ve owned it. My brother & I bought the Grenadier AD&D halflings and dwarfs boxes back in 1981 or so. The gnome is a much more recent acquisition — it was among those sent to me by someone looking for a better home for their old lead.

The thief is also Grenadier. Now that I see the pic enlarged I see he needs some eyelids — though I guess he could just have hyperthyroidism, or surprised. He’s one of the minis I rehabbed a while back.

Lastly, the Groo the Wanderer “Minstrel” mini from Dark Horse. I didn’t get the color scheme quite right (his hat should be entirely yellow and the bells and belt gold) but I am happy with him. I traded for this guy though I forget from whom. 😦 I love Sergio Aragone’s work in Mad Magazine but never read the Groo comics. I still have one other Groo mini — a wizard — that I am holding onto for a former player. He left it at my place several years ago, and I rarely bump into him any more.

Lastly, two demons — a Metal Magic succubus (actually a MegaMinis re-cast from their monsters box set) and a Reaper imp. The imp is probably mini-me to the D&D 4th edition version of Orcus (link goes to an image in someone’s Photobucket — I think it is actually art from a module cover?), what with his mini Wand of Orcus. FWIW I prefer the older version of Orcus, bloated, grey, and decadent, to the new buff generic demon with goat horns, but that’s me. The succubus unfortunately has a flattened nose — either from falling face-down at some point or just an imperfection in them old. So to compensate I painted her face to suggest overdone make-up and draw attention to the eyes. NSFW if you work in a fairly puritanical environment.

Like this:

For no particular reason, I decided to clear a few bird monsters off the painting table — in this case, three cockatrices.

They are two versions of the Grenadier cockatrice (the earlier one, I think, is the single-piece casting; it was later reworked to have one separate wing, which I guess enhances the three-dimensionality a little but it never fit quite right on the model. In between them is a casting of the Metal Magic sculpt, produced by MegaMinis.

The cockatrice is one of the many mythical creatures attested to in the Bible, so I guess some sizable percentage of the US population is committed to believing in them, like unicorns, dragons, and so on. Cockatrices are often confused with basilisks, since in folkore the terms are equivalent but in D&D they are very distinct monsters. Apart from the Book of the Dun Cow, my favorite cockatrice story is probably the cockatrice of Warsaw, since it is presented as true account.

The other bird-monsters are a pair of TSR Broobies, and a cheap plastic pelican which I painted to look like them. The shape of the head and body are pretty off, and I made a rather poor effort to reshape the bill, but for as often as I’ll use them I guess it’s good enough. One of the Broobies I bought back when it was in production (I liked the firbolg that was packaged with it, probably) and since his legs broke repeatedly, he’s got a piece of paper clip holding him upright (you can see it pretty well in the first pic). I always think of them as axebeaks, rather than broobies, for some reason.

A Reaper mini (swapped out the standard with a sword), a peice from Trivial Pursuit: LotR, and a Metal Magic figure recast by MegaMinis

Same guys from behind

This Reaper figure was sold with a huge banner to hold, but I thought he’d see more use with just a sword. This sword is one of the extras I cast when I was making lots of Prince August castings from molds — I think the sword goes to an elf or barbarian; the molds might have the same sword actually. I really like the little faces concealed in the folds and tears of the wraith’s cloak. There’s one more on his back.

Grenadier intellect devourer. One of those minis they made WAY to big…the Monster Manual has them as very tiny; this guy is huge.

They made this guy way too big … he should be tiny, like 6″ long so in scale about 2 millimeters or less.

A Ral Partha clay golem

Lots of detail on the muscles, which doesn’t seem quite right to me, but very menacing!

A Citadel knight or paladin. He’s kind of grubby so I’d say he’s a knight Templar.

These are two wooden beads, which I think were meant to hold birthday cake-sized candles. The one of the right I tried to give a bigger mouth, but I’m not sure it was worth the effort.

This is my favorite though — a Grenadier troll that I gave a nose-job to. How regal! How noble! All trolls need longer honkers.

Like this:

Crazy busy days this weekend ameliorated by some fun craft time! I finished up most of the unpainted demons and devils I have — several from the MegaMinis monster pack, as well as a really old Efreet and a crazy-looking boar that seemed like it must be demonic.

First up is a bat-demon thing — MegaMinis, a recast of a Metal Magic sculpt. He’s got a long segmented tail (as do most of the other Metal Magic demons from this set) but is otherwise very bat-like.

He just got a couple of layers of brown drybrushing and a pink wash on the nose and tail, with my usual white talons and teeth job. All these demons were super fast to paint since it was mostly a matter of a few layers of drybrushing, a wash, and a few details.

Next up a devil with a strange spade-like weapon. It’s a lot like a Chinese ‘monk’s spade,’ except they have a blade on both ends. I know Grenadier did a devil with the same weapon which maybe this was a knock-off of? I like the cresent moon shape of his head too.

Then there are two blue demons. They might actually be any of a number of things — the one with the raised arm might equally well be a troll or some sort of creeper in the dark like a grue; the reptillian one could also be some sort of saurian. They both illustrate the strangely two-dimensional quality most of the monsters from the MegaMinis set have. I wonder if Metal Magic was limited by their mold-maker, or it was just an aesthetic choice to go so flat. They all look pretty good in profile but coming head-on they look pretty goofy.

The huge hands on this one remind me of blue demon minoins of Tzeench in the Games Workshop line from the early 90s or very late 80s.

This guy has so much animation from the profile and looks so flat from the front it is just heart-breaking.

Next up some boar-demons — one is humanoid (a starving Type II demon?) and the other is of an unknown (to me) make — he might be a dire boar?

The three-pronged tail is odd; otherwise he might be a giant wereboar.

If anyone recognizes this boar monster, I’d love to know it’s make. The cratered base suggests it could be a sci-fi mini. It is lead so it must me pretty old. I think it was among the old lead someone sent me couple years back, but it might also be from a used minis bin at Origins or something.

Now lastly, my favorite of the pack and the one I put the most effort into — a Grenadier Efreet. I really wanted to make the flames throw some light on the bottoms of his arms and cast shadows over his shoulders and face. The glossy finish hides this a little; I also wimped out on depicting the reversed shadowing — I really ought to have dry-brushed black over the topmost areas. Still, he looks pretty good.

It’s a classy sculpt and based directly on Trampier’s Monster Manual illustration:

Not a perfect match but darn close! For some reason Grenadier gave him some bling. I have one other Grenadier efreet, which is a re-sculpt, that looks terrible and will be getting repainted now that I have some practice. The other guy has a more Neanderthal look to him and his arms are not crossed, but he’s still emerging from a pillar of fire. I have no idea why Grenadier would discontinue the Trampier version (the resculpt was put out before they lost the AD&D license so it’s not that!).

Valhalla of the blogs

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All written content copyright Mike Monaco, 2008-2019, except where attribution to others is explicit or implied. Some images have been collected through Google Image Search and their use is not intended as a challenge to the copyright holder, and they are included for educational purposes only. I try to use public domain images, or my own photos or drawings whenever possible. If something that belongs to you appears here and you want it removed or better attribution provided, please let me know. If you want to use any of my intellectual property for your own project, let me know: mike period monaco atsymbol yahoo period com. I’ll probably just ask for attribution.